Not confined to the TV, 3-D technology continues to show up in everyday devices, illustrating the technology’s application in virtually any situation where video is displayed. Among the latest innovations, Sprint and HTC have introduced a 3-D smartphone and a 7in tablet that will both run over Sprint’s 4G WiMax network.
At the recent International CTIA Wireless conference, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse said the HTC EVO 3D smartphone and the HTC EVO View tablet will both be available sometime this summer. He also said that the two new products bring Sprint's lineup of WiMax-capable devices to 22 products.
Sprint and HTC introduced the first WiMax smartphone, the HTC EVO 4G, a year ago. That phone, which started shipping in June, has been Sprint's most successful smartphone, Hesse said.
Users can view stereoscopic 3-D content on the new EVO smartphone without wearing glasses and send content from the phone to a 3-D-capable TV through an HDMI port.
The EVO smartphone will run Android 2.3 OS software, which is known as Gingerbread. It will also feature a dual-core 1.2GHz Snapdragon processor, making it one of the fastest smartphones on the market, according to HTC. Sprint said it also records audio, and allows users to tap a word in a transcript of an audio recording to find specific points in the recording.
The tablet runs a 1.5GHz processor and has front- and rear-facing cameras for videoconferencing. It will first ship with the Android 2.3 operating system but will be upgraded to Android 3.0, also known as Honeycomb, as soon as possible, Sprint said.
